Tuesday 24 June 2014

Horse Badorties

This morning, I finished William Kotzwinkle's book "The Fan Man." That's right, the Kotzwinkle... tearjerker hors catégorie of homesick alien dwarf “E.T.” Kotzwinkle! Or so I thought: I learned today he wrote the book after the movie, which is strange; he was probably forced by Spielberg by some evil scheme or something.

Anyway, The Fan Man is a weird and wonderful book about a hippie lunatic called Horse Badorties who
makes a sublime mess of his life. Contrary to my custom, I read it in Dutch (under the weak title “Laat maar waaien”). I usually only read Dutch, French, Yoruba and Russian books in Dutch and take the English ones in English if I can get them, but this one moved itself into my hands and it looked strange and funny so I read it.

And for once... for once the translator, Peter H. van Lieshout, got it so So right! It moved like liquid lava, the language I mean; instead of the sawdust and excelsior you sometimes get with translations, especially low-budget ones... For instance the Dutch version of Hunter S. Thompson's "Hell's Angels" I read a few months ago... Awful! [I'm talking about the dreadful earlier translation or adaptation by Adriaan Venema; I haven't read the newer one by T. Heuvelmans.] But this translation was almost perfect. Just one time he translated (or so I can only assume) the exclamations "crap! crap!" with the decapod animal 'crab', in Dutch 'krab! krab!', which makes even less sense. And the translator mistook the made-up 1001 Nights fairytale opening spell of 'sesame' for sesame seeds. But otherwise... châpeau!

I have never heard about Kotzwinkle as an author to be taken seriously but I think we should. A book of high entertainment value with subject matter that will prove unforgettable, I’m sure.

It's a sunny day in the Netherlands... no reason to feel so depressed at all.

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